On the Banks of Plum Creek

When we left, Graysen wasn't feeling great. He had forgotten to take his allergy meds the day before in all the excitement of family coming to visit--plus our usual music lessons, karate, etc. schedule. We were working on getting his lungs back to healthy and brought our whole stash of oils, OTC's, and prescription inhalers. It's a good thing we did, because the cottonwood seed population quadrupled the farther north we drove and by mid-afternoon Brennen and Gabby were a mess, followed even by Caelan and to some extent, me! Buck was already on meds for a suspected sinus infection and these gave him intense heartburn (all I had to help was children's Pepto Bismal, he took handfuls :) Let's just say, it was a rough night for the Crew . . . but during the day, we did have some fun. Here's our visit to yet another Laura Ingalls Wilder historical sight!

The museum also covered area and American history--eclectic :) But, I thought this was a very clever way to remind children to pray for our war heroes!

Since the original dug out alongside Plum Creek caved in 100 years ago, the museum built a replica on their grounds. I guess Laura's childhood perspective was very different than what it might have been for her Ma--walking into a dirt room the size of our laundry room, maybe? That was a family of five; and I complain about not having enough space . . . at least we don't have dirt floors and bugs literally crawling through our walls!

Pa, Ma, and the girls :) There were several buildings we could wander through to see artifacts from Laura's life and also some from the TV series. The kids liked the rooms set up to be old fashioned stores and banks etc. Overall, this one wasn't as cool as other ones we've visited, but I can check it off in my Laura tourist book, all the same :)

So, there it is--the hole where Laura's dugout used to be (see it there under the rectangular sign in the background?) They say the community did not realize that their Plum Creek was THE Plum Creek Laura wrote about . . . until illustrator Garth Williams showed up to sketch for cover art. Then all of a sudden a tourism swirl descended on their town and they had nothing to show people! Eventually the museum sprang up, the family that owns the land the dugout was on set it up for come and go traffic, and most recently the society purchased the original Masters Hotel (looks like somebody's house) for renovation and restoration.

Where Laura nearly drowned playing on the wooden plank when the creek flooded, where Pa hunkered down during a winter storm and ate all the Christmas goodies just a few yards from home, where Laura and Mary led Nellie into a leach-filled mud shallow during a party to repay her for her snobby attitude . . . Plum Creek :)

We took a short hike around the area on trails provided. It was fun to see some of what Laura might have seen, to imagine Pa building the "Wonderful House" out of boards on some of the flat land nearby. It was not fun to scare up a million mosquitoes, have Graysen discover three ticks crawling on him, and see the kids' allergies puff them up to watery-eye stage. Sigh. You win some, you lose some on family vacations :)

Woohoo! We arrived at Uncle C and Aunt L's in time for a delicious bbq dinner with mac & cheese and a super fresh salad. Uncle C taught the kids a board game, while we enjoyed the newly installed A/C and watched The Amazing Race finale with Aunt L :) We were blissfully unaware of the night we had ahead of us--which included poor Brennen coughing so hard that he started vomiting. See those white-carpeted stairs in the background . . . all the way down the stairs to the lower level bathroom. Oh the scrubbing! I just realized what the bright pink was!! The frosting on the giant 4th of July-inspired cookie Uncle C brought home for dessert!! It all makes sense now :) (BTW, L baked a lovely fruit crisp, which Buck said he very much enjoyed; the cookie was an extra bonus--and unfortunate for the carpeting ;)